Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884)
Richard III, Op 11 (1858)
Wallenstein’s Camp, Op 14 (1858-1859)
Hakon Jarl, Op 16 (1860-1861)
String Quartet No 1 in E minor ‘From My Life’ (1876) orch. George Szell
Festive Symphony in E major, Op 6 (1853-1854 rev. 1881)
Má vlast (1874-1879)
Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra/Petr Popelka
rec. 2023/2024, Studio 1, Czech Radio, Prague, Czechia
Supraphon SU4347-2 [3 CDs: 185]

Petr Popelka was the deputy principal double bass of the Staatskapelle Dresden from 2000 to 2019 since when he has turned to conducting, first with the orchestra of Norwegian Radio and then, since 2022, the Prague Radio Symphony. From 2024/25, whilst continuing his Prague position, he’s also been appointed principal conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

This 3-CD set is compiled from sessions made during April 2023 and 2024 and was released toward the end of the Year of Czech Music – aptly, just in time, to mark the bicentenary of Smetana’s birth. It is also Supraphon’s second bite of the Smetana cherry as back in 2007 they released a 3-CD set with the same orchestra under Vladimír Válek that included most of the same works as here, including sundry Polkas and Marches but not George Szell’s orchestration of the First String Quartet. Válek could be an erratic conductor for whom orchestral discipline was not a prerequisite – or at least that’s how it sounded from some of his recordings, including Supraphon’s Smetana set which, by common critical consent, had its ragged and unsatisfactory elements. This new one, which is clearly intended to supplant it, marks a big leap forward.

The first disc contains the three symphonic poems composed when Smetana lived in Sweden in the late 1850s. They have both vivid Lisztian impulses and also proto-operatic elements, and Popelka takes them at fleeter tempi than one usually encounters. Richard III is a notch faster than competitor versions, binding the descriptive elements of the music that bit tighter. The strings are focused and lean, and evoke the drama, passion and, ultimately, disaster of the music with focused concentration. In Wallenstein’s Camp, a four-part symphonic poem, brass fanfares are crisp, the camp scenes vividly descriptive and the final battle march themes splendidly realised. Sonics are very clear, typical of the production as a whole. Hakon Jarl is a glowering portrait of the pagan Earl Haakon, and a not wholly unsympathetic one either, with its harps prefiguring Smetana’s use of them in Má vlast, composed the following year. This is the most personally conducted of the trio, is driven quite fast, and I suspect that it’s the poem that appeals most to Popelka. He takes 15 minutes over it and whilst stopwatch criticism is a lazy game, it’s instructive that Šejna takes nearly 16, Noseda and Válek 16:30, and Kuchar nearly 17. It’s really only Kubelík who matches Popelka’s tempo and dramatic flair.

Popelka plays Szell’s orchestration of the Quartet with vivid uplift similar to the way Szell conducted it back in 1941 with the NBC Symphony (review).  It’s really only in the Polka second movement that Szell is decidedly brisker but whilst I respect the workmanship, and especially Popelka’s expert realisation of it, I’m still with the local New York critic who dissented from the general acclamation at the time Szell unveiled it by noting that the work was full of ‘clangorous realism’.   

Disc Two contains a splendid recording of a much-maligned work, the Festive Symphony. Once again, Popelka is vivid and directional insofar as the work allows him to be, taking only 41 minutes. Turn to Zagrosek (46), Kuchar and Šejna (45) and Darrell Ang on Naxos at 43. I’ve not heard Válek’s recording of this in the Supraphon box but he seems to take an unprecedented 37 minutes, so I wonder if he imposed cuts. This is a work with its longueurs, admittedly, not least with its endless and obsequious quotations of the Austrian national anthem and is at its best only in the Scherzo and Finale. The B section of the Scherzo, however, goes with a splendid swing and the ‘Vltava’ intimations in the finale, with its emergent grandiose hymnal writing, really draws the best from Popelka and his orchestra. This is a scrupulously prepared, intelligently contoured and really convincing performance of a rather problematic work.

In the booklet question-and-answer, which serves as notes, Popelka talks quite a bit about Má vlast, citing Talich’s live 1939 recording, in particular, as influential on him as well as, less straightforwardly, enjoying Harnoncourt’s recording. Here, as so often with Popelka’s conducting, it’s as much as question of the function of rubato as of speed as such. And he is notably successful at establishing atmosphere, in Vyšehrad as well as in the more obvious case of Vltava. In the last-named I find that I really wanted more tonal body and amplitude but I respected the clearly marked paragraphal incidents, the aqueous division of the winds, and the rapid watery descents whilst missing the ultimate in visionary power. Šárka, the cycle’s Scherzo, offers piquancy, romance, and warlike intensity that brings the best from orchestra and conductor. The folkloric elements of From Bohemia’s Fields and Groves are well pointed though I didn’t feel Popelka was at his best here – the great tune doesn’t quite register as it should, at least for me. The two most difficult parts of the cycle to put across are Tábor and Blaník and it’s a testament to Popelka’s essential clarity of purpose and sense of pacing that they don’t appear as anticlimactic. Those organ sonorities in Tábor are memorable here and the national character of the music is reasserted in these two panels rather than merely functioning as a sequel. Accents are taut, rubati subtly deployed, and there’s real transparency of sound. This recording, rather than Válek’s, is a true inheritor of this orchestra’s august way with the work with its great predecessors Karel Jirák and Otakar Jeremiáš.

Popelka joins the ranks of fine young Czech conductors active today. He has encouraged the Prague Radio Symphony to play with flair and precision and favours tempi and performances that foreground Smetana’s genius for dynamism and drama. The Czech Radio recordings are admirably clear. This is a more-than-handy box and though you’ll already have other recordings of Má vlast this one is never dull.  

The set is also available in Hi-Res and in Dolby Atmos for Má vlast.

Jonathan Woolf

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